The Distillation

Hundreds of thousands of people identified as drug users... are held without due process in centers where they may be subjected to torture, and physical and sexual violence in the name of “treatment".

Individuals in drug detention centers... are commonly held against their will. They are picked up by police, or “volunteered” by local authorities or family members who buckle under social pressure to make their village “drug free.” Once inside, they cannot leave. No clinical evaluation of drug dependency is performed, resulting in the detention of occasional drug users as well as others merely suspected of using drugs. In many centers, drug users are held alongside homeless people, people with psychosocial disabilities, and street children, and are forced to perform military drills, chant slogans, and work as “therapy.” “There are proven ways to address drug dependency consistent with human rights, but beatings, forced labor, and humiliation are not among them.”

Employers will have to review and amend existing workplace policies and procedures once the Cannabis Act comes into force. This legal change may also require a social shift away from traditional views on the recreational use of marijuana. One key change will include removing any express policy references to marijuana usage as an illegal “off-duty” activity. While such activity will no longer be illegal, employers can still restrict the use and possession of marijuana in the workplace.

For employers, a starting point is to realize that changes will not happen overnight. As with alcohol, legalization of recreational marijuana will not give employees the right to freely use marijuana in the workplace. Employers may continue to be able to expect their employees to show up sober and ready to work. Subject to medical conditions, employers will still be entitled to discipline employees whose recreational use of marijuana has an adverse impact on their job performance. Employers must also be mindful of the use of marijuana to treat an illness or medical condition. Employee usage should be treated in accordance with existing policies and procedures on the use of other prescription medications in the workplace. Under federal and provincial human rights legislation, employers have a duty to accommodate employees with disabilities to the point of undue hardship. The range of accommodation efforts will depend on a number of factors including the financial ability to accommodate, the type of work performed and the impact of marijuana use on the employee’s essential duties.

That total does not include the dollar value of other seized assets, like cars, homes, electronics and clothing.

These seizures are all legal under the controversial practice of civil asset forfeiture, which allows authorities to take cash, contraband and property from people suspected of crime. But the practice does not require authorities to obtain a criminal conviction, and it allows departments to keep seized cash and property for themselves unless individuals successfully challenge the forfeiture in court. Critics across the political spectrum say this creates a perverse profit motive, incentivizing police to seize goods not for the purpose of fighting crime, but for padding department budgets.

Before it’s given to patients, the marijuana will be kept inside steel narcotics lockers bolted to the wall in a room with surveillance cameras and a combination keypad on the door. Each locker has tamper-proof hinges and requires two keys—each held by a different person. If someone puts the wrong key in one of the locks, it will become inoperable and have to be drilled out.

The question of whether marijuana can help treat chronic pain is important enough on its own, but Lindley’s study takes on extra significance in the context of the ongoing epidemic of opioid abuse. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 2010 more than 14,000 people have been dying annually from overdosing on these prescription painkillers. Physicians have commented for more than a century on the potential for cannabis to substitute for opioid drugs, and several recent studies seem to bolster this hypothesis. Researchers examining public-health records have found evidence that painkiller prescriptions, opioid abuse, and overdose deaths has declined in medical marijuana states.

Arguably the most dangerous part of psychedelics is our lack of understanding... Schedule I drugs allegedly have no medicinal use, but there is now strong evidence to refute that. Mental illness is a public health crisis. Veteran suicide rates are immense. Homelessness is being linked to mental health at an alarming rate. At what point do we start trying the cutting edge?

Depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder: these diseases are among the most debilitating maladies known to man. You may think that everything that could be done to curb the effects of these diseases has been tried, but not quite. The most radical treatments are the ones that the federal government have deemed too harmful and without any justified medical use. What if the feds got it wrong?

At 28, he is living with quite severe mental health problems - "depression and anxiety as a result of childhood trauma, that led to borderline personality disorder and PTSD". He says the prescription medication he has been given results in more side-effects than benefits. "I've found that these substances, psychedelics, give me the benefits without any of those drawbacks. Me using these substances means I've been able to view my trauma so that it's just an experience, a memory like any other."​

Dr James Fadiman, who has been researching psychedelics since the 1960s, runs a website on microdosing where he asks people to report back to him about their experiences. He says more than 900 people have responded so far. "The most consistent result is people saying, 'My life seems to be working better.' [They are] more effective, their sleeping habits improve, their eating habits improve, they feel better in social situations." "Anna", who lives in the UK, says she has tried microdosing in the past, both with LSD and more recently with magic mushrooms picked from the hills near where she lives with her two children. She says the experience wasn't very dramatic, but on the days she microdosed she felt more productive. "It's just like having a slightly better quality of life.

*Values are reported in such a way that the lower the number is, the higher affinity the structure has for the receptor. This means that the LOW values on the graph are the relevant information NOT the taller bars. Researchers at the University Psychiatric Clinics (UPK) and the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospital Basel (USB) have now conducted a study into the acute effect of LSD on the brain.

They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity of 20 healthy people after taking 100 micrograms of LSD. During the MRI scan, the participants were shown images of faces portraying different emotional states such as anger, joy or fear. Professor Stefan Borgwardt and his team showed that the depiction of fear under LSD led to a notably lower level of activity in the amygdala - an area of the brain that is believed to be central to the processing of emotions. This observation could explain some of the changes in emotional experience that occur after taking hallucinogens.

In Chile, the private and personal use of cannabis has been decriminalized since 2005. By 2016, the Chilean congress had approved a bill allowing locals to grow small amounts for medical, recreational, or spiritual use..

It has been spreading globally, as far back as 1976, with countries like the Netherlands and Portugal experimenting with decriminalization and teaching the world a lesson on the importance of respecting personal choices.

The legislation would seem to put Canada in violation of three United Nations treaties concerning drugs. But a study released this week by the University of Ottawa Global Strategy Lab found that the government may be able to justify the measure under exemptions for “scientific purposes.”

“Criminal prohibition has failed to protect our kids and our communities,” said Bill Blair, a lawmaker and former Toronto police chief whom Mr. Trudeau appointed to manage the legislation...households will be allowed to grow up to four marijuana plants...growing, importing, exporting or selling marijuana outside licensed channels will remain serious crimes, according to Mr. Blair and Ralph Goodale, the public safety minister.

Researchers have found that there is a correlation between psychedelic microdosing and a decrease in symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, Bipolar disorder and even addiction.

The analogous nature of the active chemicals in drugs like LSD to serotonin, a chemical in the brain associated with happiness, is a big contributor to this, as it can relax users and even take them out of psychotic episodes in some self-reported cases. The decreased sense of self allows users struggling with mental health disorders to abandon a potentially negative self-perception and gain a different perspective.

ECfES

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